Rebound of jobs takes long lunch

On Friday, we were told the U.S. economy gained 236,000 jobs, while the unemployment rate fell to 7.7 percent, the lowest it has been in four years.

Combined with the recent historic highs of the stock market, one could be excused for thinking that the economy is finally breaking free from the stranglehold of the last recession.

That of course is not factually true on the whole, and certainly is not the case for many segments of the country, because even as the job picture brightens for some Americans, it remains dark for others.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, while the unemployment rate for whites stands at 6.8 percent, for example, it is 13.8 percent for blacks and 9.6 percent for Hispanics.

Also telling in these new job figures is that job growth reflects private-sector activities, while public-sector employment, which has been declining for a number of years, fell by 10,000 in February.

Of course, more dramatic cuts are on the horizon if federal lawmakers are unable to agree on a budget deal, and the sequestration, which could cut some 700,000 government jobs, runs its course.

In addition to cuts to the military, some 50,000 educators would be impacted, according to Mary Kusler, government relations director at the National Education Association. That would be in addition to about 300,000 teachers who have already lost their jobs because of cuts to state and local government budgets.

And those who think cutting jobs in the public sector is a good thing, and that job creation should be left to the private sector, should probably think again.

The bureau’s data also show that in February there were 2.6 million people who were not in the labor force but wanted and were available for work and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. These individuals, the bureau reported, were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the four weeks preceding the survey.

In addition, there were 4.8 million people who had been jobless for 27 weeks or more, accounting for 40.2 percent of the unemployed.

Indeed, experts have noted that if you include part-time workers who would rather have a full-time job and people who want to work but have stopped looking for jobs, the unemployment rate would be more than 14 percent.

Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute put it in perspective when she noted that, despite the new job number and lower unemployment rate, we still have a deficit of 8.9 million jobs, if you add the “3 million we are still down from when the recession started” to the “5.9 million we should have added over this period to keep up with growth in the potential labor force.

“Even at February’s growth rate, we wouldn’t get back to the pre-recession unemployment rate until mid-2017,” she said. “The jobs deficit is so large that to return to the pre-recession unemployment rate by February 2016, another three years from now, we would have to add 320,000 jobs every single month between now and then.”

Also noteworthy, the bureau’s data show there were about 8 million people employed part-time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job. Catherine Rampell, writing for the New York Times, noted that among those working when the recession began, 16.9 percent worked part time, and that today the proportion of part-time workers has climbed to 19.2 percent.

All this seems to point to a structural shift in our economy. The private sector might not be able to produce the kind of jobs we have lost — full-time and with decent wages and benefits — not in an era when the formula of workforce reductions and reduced wages and benefits is driving corporate profits to record levels.

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